


College AU

by Sauou



Category: Banana Bus Squad
Genre: College, Drabbles, M/M, Mention of sex, fun times, invisible roommate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6230590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sauou/pseuds/Sauou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke has an invisible roommate that no one believes is real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Quit lying man, you don’t even have a roommate,” Evan taunts him, in front of the coffee shop. 

“I told you already, he has weird sleeping habits!” Luke rubs his face, too tired to be doing this again. Balancing two large cups of coffee as they head back to the dorms.

“So what, this invisible roommate of yours sleeps all day and still manages to pass all his classes? I call bullshit!” Nogla gripes at the back.

“He does the work!” Luke shoots back.

“Yeah sure,” Tyler rolls his eyes. “You just don’t want to admit you have a coffee addition.”

“I already told you!” Luke starts to shout, “I don’t even like coffee. He’s the one–”

“Look if you want a roommate so badly why don’t you just take Nogla?” Evan cuts in, grinning at said man.

“Oh fuck off ye cunts!” Nogla curses and pushes ahead of the group.

“Yes! Please take Nogla! He snores like a fucking race horse!” Tyler pleads. “I don’t think I’ve had a full nights sleep in months.”

“Me??” Nogla spins around. “I’m not the one–”

“Are you kidding me? Fuck no! I’m on the third floor and I can STILL hear him!” Luke yells. “You keep your roommate, I like mine.”

“Just admit he doesn’t exist,” Evan says. “You don’t need to keep pretending you live with someone.”

“OK, fuck you guys. I already told you a hundred times, his name is Jonathan and we used to live next door back in North Carolina.”

Tyler snorts. “And my great aunt’s a science major.”

“That’s wonderful for your aunt,” Luke calls out as he slips inside the front door of the dorm and runs up the stairs.

Evan is just a few seconds behind him, not having reacted as fast, and by the time he makes it up the stairs, only catches a glimpse of a hand closing Luke’s door.

He knocks on it.

“Fuck off! We’re naked in here!” Luke yells from inside.

“What? Already?” Evan asks, surprised.

.

Two hours later the heavy and very distinctive sounds of moans and flesh slapping flesh once again come from the other side of Evan’s wall.

“I want to know who’s in there!” Evan mutters to himself, fighting a blush at the length of one deep, and very enthusiastic groan.

“Huh?” Craig says from behind his headphones. “You say something man?”

Evan shakes his head.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to say thanks before for the coffee! I love you coffee!” Craig shouts over the music in his ears.

There is giggling for a moment on the other side of the wall, then a hard slam right in front of them, and the wall actually starts to squeak from the force pressed again and again and again.

Evan can actually hear the music blasting from Craig’s headphones, he’s got it turned up so loud.

“You’re going to go deaf!” He yells.

No response.

A voice he doesn’t have a face for starts talking fast and dirty and it makes Evan blush the harder.

“He doesn’t have a roommate, but he does have a lover,” he mutters to himself, and settles in on his bed, listening in on the sex next door, pants uncomfortably tight.


	2. Chapter 2

And Craig is coming from the bathrooms, his fourth trip of the night so far, his cups of coffee having burned straight through him as if he was tap water and coffee the faucet.

When he sees the guy coming from the other direction, unfamiliar face in a small hall, and he could be somebody’s friend staying over for the night you never know.

But he’s wearing a shirt several sizes too large, a specific shirt in fact, that Craig can distinctly remember Luke having worn all through the day because Tyler and Evan were making fun of Luke for wearing a shirt with teddy bears on it in their last class together.

And he’d swear on his life that it’s the same damn shirt, but something just isn’t adding up right in his head.

But he meets the guy in the middle of the hall, almost too tired to even stand and the guy is only wearing a shirt, and probably not much else, it drops so high on his thighs Craig is afraid to investigate further.

He yawns, covers his mouth with one hand, and says hello.

“Morning,” greets the stranger, with entirely too chipper an attitude for this hour of the night.

He wants to ask something else but his brain is no longer connected to his mouth so he blurts out, “Who are you?”

And the guy laughs and answers “Jonathan”, and the name should mean something, it is familiar, but it’s too late and he’s too tired so he just asks for what he really wants.

“You got any coffee man? I can’t go across campus to get some and my roommate passed out so he’s no help either.”

And Jonathan laughs and laughs so hard he hunches over and okay, so he’s wearing boxers at least under the shirt that’s good.

Yeah, that’s good.

But Jon straightens up, and wipes tears from his eyes, and admits “Actually that’s why I came out here. Sometimes the janitor staff keep some extra stuff in the common room and I don’t know about you but I’d kill for a good cup of coffee.”

Craig finds himself really liking this Jonathan, and they go downstairs to the room, where Jon shows him the secret stash and they just sit there, giggling and drinking until sunrise.

Conspiring over different flavors and ways of preparing coffee and all the things you can do with it.

And he wakes up a few hours later, feeling like complete shit, drool coating the side of his mouth and shirt. Craig is sprawled all across the best couch in the common room, Jon is nowhere to be seen, and a worried Evan is standing in front of him trying to shake him awake.

He is dressed for classes, and is saying something that sounds like “Were you out here all night man? We’re going to be late. Isn’t that what you had on yesterday? Did you sleep out here? Why? You look horrible.”

His head is spinning, his throat is sandpaper, something is breeding in his stomach and yeah, he feels probably as bad as he looks.

“Overdose,” Craig mutters, and rolls off the couch.

“On what?” Evan asks, trying to help him up. “You don’t smoke.”

“"Coffee,” Craig admits sheepishly.

Evan laughs. “Only you would overdose on coffee. Come on, let’s get you to bed. I’ll tell them you caught something and had to call out sick.” Pulling him to his feet, and up the stairs they go, arm in arm, Craig draped over Evan like a drunk man.


	3. Chapter 3

The softest touches, the gentlest whispers of love.

There are two beds in their room, it’s standard for every dorm to have two beds and two desks and two residents. But they lucked out and ended up with each other.

Luke arrived last to the dorm, to see Jonathan already sitting on the bed, frame snug right under the window, afternoon light brushing against the back and face he knew so well.

Luke dropped both bags to the floor, arms out reaching, saying silently for him, ‘why didn’t you tell me?’

“You fucker,” he cries, closing the door. “I didn’t know.. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming too?”

And Jon is just grinning. Laughs under the mid-afternoon light.

Luke falls into him, and they both laugh so hard their sides hurt from the effort of it, hugging each other, holding on so tight it’s as if they never had to say a tearful goodbye hours and hours earlier.

As if they never once separated.

.

The desks sit side by side, of course. Jon’s bed stays under the window and he bathes in sunlight, every inch of it, soaking him to the bone.

Luke’s bed rests against the far wall, and they’re either in one or the other. They sleep pressed close, like puppies in the den. Arms over arms, legs entwined. Softly rumbling chest to chest. Luke’s nose buried so deep in Jon’s hair that all he can smell are the old summer fields they used to run through together, so long ago. Jon’s arms wrapping up and around Luke’s back, holding tight even in the deepest parts of sleep, through all his dreams.

They are inseparable.

.

Jonathan stays up all night and sleeps all day. Dark circles start to form under his eyes and Luke teases him for it.

Says he resembles more a raccoon than a human. Giggling as Jon laughs and tackles him, tries to tickle him. He knows every sensitive inch of him.

Jon is always asleep by the time Luke comes back from classes, carrying both of their work. Setting it on the desk along with a large, hot and steaming mug of Jon’s favorite coffee.

.

Jonathan sleeps until the sun goes down, as if it is the absence of light that wakes him.

His bed is right next to Luke’s desk, and he rests always facing the wall, but so close to the edge he could fall off it at a moments notice.

Luke hums to himself while he works and threads his fingers through his boy’s hair. Running circles and lines up and down that drowsy head.

Jon cracks one bleary eye open just enough to see him, and announces sleepily, “I’m Delirious.”

Luke grins at him and murmurs back, “That you are.”

And rests his hand over Jon’s face, gently covering those eyes until the softest sounds of heavy slumber roll up to his ears. Snores so faint he can barely hear them, growing deeper by the minute.

Rumbling up and out and through his arm, and he keeps one hand on the bed while he works, late afternoon light casting an orange glow through the whole room.

Jonathan’s chest rising and falling as he breathes.

Content, happy. His soul at such a state of peace that there are no words for it.


	4. Chapter 4

It was the dawn before predawn, the hour when all the world is dark and silent, still in the way old ghost stories love to tell about. The time between times, stuck in the middle of morning and night, and Jonathan is still awake.

From his window, he can see more than half the campus, buildings squashed and pressed so tightly together that one barely ends before another begins. Pale lamps cast a soft glow over sidewalks that wind like serpents across the compound. 

Lighting the way.

There is so much darkness all around, almost oppressing silence, a sea of black swarming and consuming the world. A faint breeze shifts through the outline of trees, blows gently past his window, and is gone.

He’s been awake for hours, since before the sun rose yesterday even, and he’s barely holding on now as it is. His eyes heavy and dry from lack of sleep, he yawns and rests his head in his hands.

Staring out the window, the full weight of his eyelids proving to be something he can’t fight, and he falls deeper into his palm. His fingers going limp as the desk supports him, keeps him sitting up.

The light of the computer monitor flashes in the edges of his eyes, reaching through the slimmest cracks of his lids but failing to keep him connected to the world. 

The only sound he can hear is the steady hum of the computer, still running, fan still churning on his desk softly, as it had been all day.

And the faintest rustle of bedsheets being moved from behind him.

“Are you _still_ up?” Comes from the bed as Luke rises, old mattress springs creaking as he tosses the covers aside.

And Jon is already half-covered in sleep, but still he can make out the distinct creak of the floorboards settling as Luke sets his feet firmly on the floor and stands up. 

Shuffling his feet as he walks, crossing the short distance between bed and desk to stand by Jonathan.

Takes the mouse, the softest tap against wood as Luke drags it within reach, and then uses it. _Click. Click._

He is leaning gently against Jon’s shoulder, rests an elbow there as he closes all the open programs. Sighing softly and muttering, “I don’t know why you waited so long to write your damn essay. You should have started weeks ago.”

His shirt brushing against Jon’s unresponsive back as he reaches over him, and hits the power button.

The computer winds down, lets out one last pitiful wail before shutting off completely, and all is still.

“Honestly,” Luke mutters, looking down. “If you weren’t playing video games all day you would have been done by now. I swear you do this every damn time.”

A faint snore is the only response he gets and Luke chuckles to himself, and drops down to one knee. Slides both arms between Jon and the chair, and takes a firm hold. One behind his back, one beneath his legs.

Jonathan is dead weight, and his head rolls back as Luke pulls him close. Presses him against his chest and just holds him for a few moments, breathing.

Somewhere in the distance an early bird starts to chirp, singing it’s soft melody.

“Let’s go to bed,” he whispers.

And smooth as a skater drifting across the ice, he lifts. Shifting his weight from the balls of his feet and on up, back and forth across his body as he rises, Jonathan clutched tight in his arms. 

The faintest traces of daylight begin to cut through the darkness, edging the horizon and inching it’s way into their window.

Jon slumps into him, he’s too far gone by this point, nothing will save him now. And Luke would be happy to just stand there and hold him for hours more, but he’s just as tired too and needs to get back to sleep before he falls over and passes out on the floor.

Gently shifting the limp body in his arms, Luke tries to blink himself awake for just a few seconds more, and shuffles his way back to the bed.

The walk seems to have doubled in the span of just a few minutes, and he’s not exactly sure how, but he manages to make it there. And he so desperately wants to just fall face-first into the inviting warmth and comfort of those lovely blankets but he doesn’t want to wake Jon up, the poor guy has been up all day, he needs these few moments of peace.

So he stops at the edge, just barely touching the corner of the bed, and starts to sink into it. He moves like water falling over the cliff’s face, slow but steady.

Jon snorts once, deep in his sleep, but Luke makes it all the way down until he’s sitting on the bed again, back where he started. And lays down.

He lets go of Jon’s legs, and drops his arm over the side of the bed, and leaves it there. Eyes already closed, the heavy weight laying on his chest is quickly pulling him under and he couldn’t be bothered to mind at all.

Jon stretches out over the top of him, getting comfortable, and is draped everywhere. Snuggled close beneath Luke’s neck, his faint breaths ghost under his chin and his feet splay out as he settles down.

Their hearts slow, heavy with sleep.

.

It is six am, and the shrill piercing noise so suddenly brings Luke back to the waking world that he flinches and sits upright immediately. Jon rolling off his chest and falling back down to nestle into the cocoon of blankets like an animal burrowing into it’s den.

The damn fire alarm is going off all throughout the building and it’s giving Luke a damn headache, he can hear the people yelling and running down the hall now, stomping their feet and slamming the doors and walls as they pass, making sure that everyone is up.

“God damn it,” he mutters, and rubs at his face.

Luke turns to look at Jon, and just shakes his head. Jon has already firmly buried himself in the blankets, and only a small tuft of hair poking out from his cover shows any sign of life from him.

“Come on, come on,” Luke pulls at the sheets a little, but a sleepy grumble is his only response.

And the alarm is just cutting sharper into his brain and the RA is knocking loudly on their door now and he’s too damn tired for this shit, so he just scoops Jon up, blankets and all.

Muttering to himself as he walks to the door, and desperately trying to blink open eyes that seem determined to stay closed.

Actually getting through the door, though, proves to be a bit of a problem.

Luke’s hands are full of sleepy Jonathan and bedsheets and he’s reluctant to set him down, he’d probably just curl up in a ball on the floor and go to back sleep right there. 

Ignoring the yelling still coming from outside, he whispers to Jon, “hold on tight”, and shifts him over onto his back.

The only reply in answer he gets are a pair of arms tightening around him as a chin presses into his neck and the soft breathing of deep sleep ghosts over his flesh.

Jon falls so quickly back into dreaming it’s as if he had never really left, and Luke carries him out the door, walking slow and steady between the rushing throng and the commotion of the masses.

Safe and warm, buried in his blanket and pressed tight to Luke’s back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on devils-deeds-23 from tumblr‘s lovely art : http://devils-deeds-23.tumblr.com/post/140844673903


	5. Chapter 5

It’s been two long, weary years since you’ve been back in your hometown again.

You missed your senior year of high school, missed prom and finals and so many important moments just to stay home, be with your family.

Your mother was sick. What else were you supposed to do?

(But she’s doing much better now, even though there’s still days where you worry about her. You don’t get to go home as much as you want, you try to call her at least once a day. Just to let her know that you’re still here.

To make sure that she’s still there.

The simple sound of her voice saying, “ _Luke, are you well? Did you get enough to eat today? How is school going?”_ is enough to lull you.)

You and your dad moved upstate to stay with your aunt while your mom was in the hospital up there, and you took a job in a local bookstore to help pay the bills. (To bide your time, you were slowly going insane with worry.)

Eventually she started getting better. Started pressuring you to go back to school, finish what you started.

You took some classes in the local community college up there, fought your way through the missed years, the lost time. Struggling to catch up, no room for anything but work and pain.

You went to work with your textbooks in your hands, fell asleep across your notebooks, with your mother’s soft hand patting your hair from her hospital bed.

She got better though, and your dad took her back home. But you had to stay and finish what you started.

It’s been a long two years, with no sleep, no peace, no rest at all from books on one end and books on the other. Only resolution and pure determination that lances through you keeps you alive.

_(Late night missed text messages from Jonathan.)_

Gave you fire.

( _“I started a Youtube channel! My name is H2O Delirious. How are things up there?”_ )

Through the longest days when you worked so late into the night at the store, that you drove back to your aunt’s apartment barely half-awake and desperately trying to keep your eyelids from falling shut against the morning sun. 

Sometimes falling asleep in the car just as you parked it because you simply didn’t have enough energy to make it the rest of the way to your bed.

(” _I hit a thousand subscribers! Ten thousand! Your mom says you haven’t been calling her as much. I rarely hear from you as it is.. Is everything okay?”)_

Through the early mornings when you woke up, any sleep you might have caught drifting quickly away from you as you stumbled out the door and to your classes.

( _Jonathan’s face popping up in Skype at 4am. So tired, he had been waiting for hours just to see you, just to talk but he can barely stay awake too and you can see him nodding off as you two talk._

_His head falls into the keyboard and he doesn’t wake up when you try yelling at him to go to bed.)  
_

It took so much, but you made it. You fought your way back to where you started, got through what you missed out on, and finally managed to catch up to Jonathan.

And now you’re here.

Sitting back on Jonathan’s bed, the house eerily quiet as you hold his controller in sweat-sticky hands. Burning tension keeping you from letting go completely as you cross your legs, start a new game, and wait.

.

Your neighbors were loud. Obnoxious people who didn’t know how to be quiet, stomping around at all hours of the day and night, so many people going in and out of their door always the center of attention, always out to have fun.

They’d have parties every weekend, and drink the hours away. Stampeding through the walls while you tried to finish your homework and you didn’t blame them a bit, you didn’t regret any of it.

You had more important things to worry about.

.

You loved waking up in the morning to Jonathan’s text messages. He’d send you the stupidest stuff, jokes that make no real sense, pictures that had no caption or meaning to them but they distracted you and made you smile.

Every time, without fail.

Hair mussed from sleep, the sheets sticking to your back as you sat up and grinned into the soft glow from your phone.

Just you and Jonathan’s texts.

.

And you haven’t seen him for two years now, and it really shouldn’t be such a big deal, but your heart is convulsing beneath your chest, and you can’t quite get enough air no matter how hard you try, so you let yourself into his house, and go straight to his room, to his video games.

You two used to play for hours every day. With you on the bed and him on the floor, the cord of the controller draped across his shoulder as he leaned into your legs.

Sometimes you won. Often you lost. But it was all fun, in the end.

.

_(”I’ll miss you when you go,” He says, looking up at you from the floor. Wide, innocent eyes betraying all his honesty. “When you go to college.”_

_You laugh. “You’ll forget about me when you go to your own college. All the pretty girls out there fighting for you? You won’t even remember I exist.”_

_He just smiles and shakes his head._

_Goes back to the video game.)_

_._

The front door shuts, too loud, and you know he’s finally home.

You can hear his footsteps shuffling through the house. Slow and weary, his shoes drag over the carpet with a hushed whisper.

He stops in the kitchen and two _thumps_ hit the wall, small and localized.

His shoes.

The barely-there pad of his bare feet across the tiles announces him as he moves through the kitchen. The fridge door opens and closes, and you can hear a can being opened.

The sharp and sudden release of air reminding you that you’re still sitting on his bed, uncomfortably at ease with the controller resting between your limp hands.

The game is paused, and all your attention, all your focus is on listening to him move.

.

_(”Have you met any cute girls yet?” You find waiting for you on your phone, two hours after he sent the message._

_You have just walked out of your last class for the day and are standing on the sidewalk before the building, the day crisp and chilly. A soft breeze blowing through you._

_“None as cute as you,” you reply, and wait for a response not knowing why you’re so nervous._

_What you’re afraid of.)_

.

You left the lights off when you walked into his room, the sun filtering through the blinds was enough to see by hours ago, but now shadows stick to the corners. Only the soft flickers of the television illuminate the dark edges, a too-small dresser, a soft mattress with batman sheets.

Flashes of purple as the same waiting cut-scene plays over and over again. Casting over you sitting there, cross-legged.

Heart in your throat as you swallow down the words you want to say. That you want to yell out at the top of your lungs.

_“I’m here. Jonathan I’m right here.”_

Instead, you wait.

.

_(”Are you coming back home already?”  Even on the other side of the phone, you can still see your mother’s worried face._

_She’s your mother. You’ve caused too much worry in her life not to know that particular lift of the the face, the furrow of her brows when she drags her words like that._

_“What about college?” She asks. “It’s only been a few months.”  
_

_“It’ll be fine, momma.” You try to sooth, pacing back and forth on the lawn outside the community campus. “I’m all caught up on everything I missed and I can start in the fall closer to home.”_

_“I sent in a few applications,” you continue, feet taking in circles around the building because you have to walk when you talk.  
_

_“It’s too early to tell yet though, but I think I might get in State.” There is a burning inside of you, a worry you can’t name._

_She sighs, and the sound carries you back home.  
_

_Back to the summer breeze drifting through your house as you asked to stay over, just once more, at Jonathan’s house. Even though it was a school night and you had homework and so many reasons_ not _to go._

_It’s the quiet sound of giving in.)_

.

His hand trails along the wall, the softest of scratches over the wood paneling as he moves down the hallway, slowly. Gently, and with a such great care for every step.

As if he is dragging a heavy weight in his soul.

He’s just always been so loud and rambunctious that it hurts you a little not to hear that. Not listen to him yell as he runs through the house, slamming into everything and making so much noise everywhere.

Knocking in the dinner table as he slips across the floor because he’s just so eager, so full of life.

What happened to your boy?

.

_(”I’m lonely,” Jonathan starts to type and quickly deletes.  
_

_“When are you coming back home?” Gone as just as fast._

_“I miss you.” As if it never existed._

_And he’s waiting at the bus stop, waiting to get to school, waiting for yet another late reply, an answer for attention. His phone warm between his hands as he stands on the curb._

_The thoughts are all mumbled and jumbled up inside his head and all he can think about is the one person who’s not there right now.)_

_._

_(His face twists as he stalks the school yard, waiting, trapped._

_A caged animal with invisible boundaries, silent fences. Places he can’t go, a person he can’t see._

_Jonathan’s fists clench. Distress and frustration building up inside of, burning through him. Stuck behind his teeth as he screams across the yard, over all the people quietly eating lunch._

_Yelling obscenities at people twice his size. More than double his weight and he’s running fast, at them, away from his own emotions._

_He’s fighting an internal war of worry and doubt. He’s fighting someone he never had a bad thing to say about before during lunch, out numbered and out matched but still swinging._

_Still waging war.)_

_._

_(He’s sitting in the principle’s office, his parents on either side of him shaking their heads. Saying, “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”_

_“He used to be such a good boy.”  
_

_The words going over his head as Jonathan hunches forward in his seat, leaning over his phone as he texts Luke, “What did the Tin Man say when he got run over by a steamroller?”_

_“I don’t know, what did he say?” Flashes on his phone and the immediate response he gets makes him smile almost as much as the punchline does.  
_

_“Curses! Foil again!” Jonathan types, and can’t help the grin from blossoming, spreading from cheek to cheek and into his eyes._

_Into his heart as the only reply he gets are those three letters, “Lol.” But he knows Luke is laughing, is giving everything he’s got into that from-the-belly sound he lets out when something catches him off guard._

_“Jon!” His mother pulls at his shoulder, makes him sit upright. “Are you even listening to us? You can’t keep getting into trouble like this!”_

_“That’s the third fight this week,” the Principal warns over his father’s silent_ ‘why are you doing this’ _look. “If you keep this up you’ll be expelled.”_

_“Give me the phone,” His father orders. “You’re not even listening to us.”  
_

_The light draining from Jonathan’s eyes as he glares back. Fingers turning into unmovable stone around the phone._

_“Over my dead body.”)_

.

Shadows break free as the door opens and all of a sudden Jonathan is standing there, framed by light and taller than you remember.

He doesn’t see you at first, everything is much darker than you realized because the light from the hallway blinds his features from you for a minute, all you can see is his outline.

His hand sliding off the doorknob as he walks into the room.

His arm in the air as he drinks the last of his soda, the can a dark silhouette against the light. His throat as he swallows everything down, Adam’s apple bobbing.

Your mouth is dry. There’s nothing but air in you as you try to speak.

But words fail.

.

Someone is in his room, sitting on his bed, barely illuminated by the soft glow of his television.

Fragments of purple across their face, and he should feel more alarmed, there’s an intruder in his house, a stranger there, but what if it was Luke? What if it was his friend?

The one person he wanted most to see?

His eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, blurred edges becoming firm outlines. Shadows seperating from the light as he begins to recognize.

“Luke?”

.

A sense of wonder and fear in his voice, a tremble you’ve never heard before and it sets your heart at ease in a way it shouldn’t just to hear him in the same room as you.

Clear and not distorted by scratchy mics, bad reception.

You shift on the bed and sit up, so many things burning in your lungs and trying to get out all at once, at the same moment in time and you’re suddenly scared.

Of what, you still can’t name, but you manage a whisper that leaves you breathless, twisted up in your own emotions.

“I’m here.”

.

Thunder inside his ribs.

A world exploding beneath his chest as his heart beats like it’s never beat before and he steps into the room, right up to his bed.

The features of a stranger turn into something he can recognize, this close to their face, this far into the darkness of a silent room, away from the light of the hall.

That slightly pointed nose, the scruff around the neck like he’s since given up on shaving completely.

Falling into the bed on his knees as surprise knocks his feet right out from under him, empty soda can rolling across the floor.

.

And he’s uttering your name in a tone of voice you’ve never before knew but it’s making your skin itch as you drop the controller on the floor, and reach out to him.

He falls into you, whispering so many things beneath his breath that you can’t catch any of it and he’s holding on tight to your shirt.

He’s got a grip that won’t let go, his fingers curl against your chest right over your heart, and the scent of peaches goes right into your brain as he lays his head under yours and trembles.

Words are useless. All the things you want to say, all the times you wished he could have been there, how do you let that out?

“I missed you,” is uttered against your neck.

“I wish I could have been there,” as he climbs into your lap. So close his hair soft on your cheek as he clings to you.

Your arms go up and around his back and you’re clutching him close. Hugging him with a strength that you find impossible to lessen. Your skin is burning, and he is a fire.

Wind rising up and sweeping through as the words move behind your teeth, just under your tongue.

Rolling out into something you never planned on saying, but are now beginning to realize you have always felt _(and probably always will)._

_“I love you.”_

His soft breathing against your neck stops as he pulls back to look at you with wide eyes. His face is bare, bathed in emotions, and you can see the tip of a joke rising in him, a defense mechanism because surely you jest.

“I love you,” you repeat, and frame his face lightly with your hands, gently pressing close, and closer yet.

Your lips against his, and finally, finally he gets it.

“Happy Birthday, Jonathan.” 

.


	6. extra scene for Birthday drabble

Luke holds his face in his hands and Jon blinks up at him, wide-eyed, lips soft and swollen from kisses.

“I bet you didn’t even notice the flowers I got for you,” he whispers, grinning, and leans back in for more.

“Wait, flowers? What flowers?” Jon asks and looks all around his room as if they would be hiding somewhere in there. Maybe behind the TV..?

Luke laughs at him and tickles his sides. “They’re on the kitchen table. In a vase with a red bow. How’d you not see them?”

Jon frowns and pushes Luke’s hands away. “I thought those were from my mom.”

“She usually leaves you things like that?” He teased, and kisses his neck.

“No..oh.” His neck arches to the side and he leans back, back on to the bed. Luke quickly following after.

He pulls the hem of his shirt up. “Happy Birthday,” he repeats.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The original version of the last two chapters.

Jonathan was only fifteen when he finally had his first kiss, worn out from stress and school and so tired all he wanted to do was lay down and sleep and sleep and sleep. 

But it was his birthday and he’d already blown off all the plans everyone was trying to make for him just so he could go home and stumble into an empty house, not even bothering to use the light switches as he drags himself down the hall to his bedroom, already ready to end the day.

The door is shut and the lights are off, and Jonathan thinks nothing off it as he opens the door and walks in, heads straight for his bed in the dark, it’s something he could find completely blind at this point. It’s all he’s aiming for.

But there’s a shuffle in the darkness, right in front of him in fact, and he stops.

Or rather he walks into something that crinkles, and stops in surprise, brain belatedly catching up with the rest as all of a sudden he hears a click and then light is flooding the room, it’s everywhere and it’s blinding him he has to shut his eyes it’s so bright. 

But when he opens them, Luke is still standing there, one hand holding the cord to the light switch on fan, the other cradling a large bouquet of flowers. 

“If I’d known you were going to go stumbling around in the dark like a madman I would’ve picked a different spot to wait,” he says, grinning.

But Jonathan is just still in shock because all day long he tried to catch Luke’s attention and all day he failed but now he’s right here in front of him, and it’s all he wanted but he doesn’t know what to do. 

“Hi,” Jon finally awkwardly lets out. 

“Fancy meeting you here,” Luke chuckles. And drops his arm from the light switch to hold the flowers with both hands. 

Jon blinks, “What? Its my room..” 

“Here,” Luke says, and thrusts the flowers in Jonathan’s face. “I got these for you.” 

And hes trying not to sneeze, but there are an awful lot of flowers, so he just takes them all until his arms are filled with the bundle and he’s afraid to press to close to it lest the buds break.

But it makes him feel gentle, warm in a way he can’t describe.

His chin tickles against the tops of the petals and he begins to duck down into them. Closes himself around them.

Blushing, he says “thank you”. And means more than just the flowers.

“You’re welcome,” Luke says, and leaning forward, kisses him.

Full and on the mouth. His lips soft and tender, moving slowly over his own.

“I love you.”


End file.
